How to beat the (insert meta army here)?

[mad lemmey]

What ho chaps!
Thread for the 'How to beat x' questions...
Mine is...
Massed average foot armies? You know, the 13 TUGs in 3 hours type?
🤣

[Rino]

What weapon do they carry ?

[RocketSix]

Question is - is that the meta? Looking at skullrollers I'd say not. Pin and punch - just like the old days

[nikgaukroger]

Massed average foot armies? You know, the 13 TUGs in 3 hours type?
🤣

The answer rather depends on what your own army actually has available. The question is rather ill-defined really.

That said, one obvious way is to concentrate hard hitting troops as much as possible in one area to quickly knock a hole that you can then exploit, but it does depend on having said hard hitting troops ...

[mad lemmey]

Tried that, 2 0-15 losses.  Decent armies with good troops cannot win.
Your opponent has nothing, but 4 or 5 more tugs than you. You cannot win, even if you are chewing lumps out of him, as his units are always bigger. And then he will flank you, as you cannot break through, and he will always have spare uunits mits. 
I might go back to Picts, at least I know they are usless and will always be broken...
Anyone suggest a protected, unarmed army with two talented, two competent generals, as that appears to be the way forwards.

[nikgaukroger]

Well, if you've decided you can't win before you start you won't win 

[martymagnificent]

I like a horde as much as the next man but it can be a path to draws rather than wins.

Are the armies at the top of Skullrollers horde's? I would have thought they were knights/cavalry but some of the lists could do either.

Martin

[Hunter]

I can't speak for the podium dwellers but I managed a 2,15,15,15,15 at skulls with a bit of a horde - 5 x 8 tribal close, protected, average, shieldwall only foot and 8 x 6 formed loose, protected average, long spear cavalry. 2 competent instinctive commanders and talented instinctive ally commanders (one of whom was unreliable in my last game with Si!).

OTOH Hussites ain't cheap and they came second.

You pays your points and takes your chances!

Big thanks to Si and my other opponents at the basho.

HH

[martymagnificent]

Thats an interesting list and definitely a 'horde'. I would tend to say anything with 11 or more TuG's at 10K is probably a 'horde' (depending on the size of the units, if they are small it is more of a 'swarm'). How many did the top 3 have and how big were they?

Martin

[Simon Meg-Meister]

All

A fantastic weekend gaming!! Loved all the games. 
The Huns were great fun to play with - and very hunnic in style if you are going to make them work.

Hunters army very difficult for me - not the foot but the long spear cavalry. 
But even so it was a 15-8 that until Hunter rolled 6 skulls in a row was probably going slightly in favour of the huns - respite rolling 3x1s on evade moves.
Don't think there is a major issue.  Great army choice and nice simple plan.  Set me a great puzzle.

I currently have just 4 simple ideas in total for the final set.  But want to discuss with the inner team first on a Skype before making public.
Will also be studying the army lists for player patterns for final points tweaks.  As it happens one would address Will's issue a little bit and is designed to keep game resolution high.  Aiming to put them out for a bit of private testing to check they are final improvements after Britcon armies are in.



Si

[marshalney2000]

As one of those who beat, Will with a thirteen TUG army (Feudal German) I must admit to having a certain sympathy with his concerns. I know that Stalin said that Quantity has a quality all of its own but!!!.
I do believe that small units of real quality troops can regularly be chewed up by large TUGs of lower quality troops due to the number of white dice being rolled by the lower quality troops will eventually wear down a six base quality unit. Rolling yellow dice are no guarantee of success.
In many of the games that Hunter and I won with our 13 TUG armies the smaller better class armies were pinned in place with our surplus TUGs being used to get around the flanks and roll up the enemy. In Hunter's  army his five units of foot with eight bases with no weapons but shield wall can stand a long time while he has eight mounted Average TUGs with long spear being very mobile  run around seeking targets. Average mounted long spear must be one of the most cost effective troops available - need to look at?
To give another example. In my fight with the Five Hegamons I had all his chariots fighting my loose and Danish foot. My Mounted got on the flank and destroyed 4 units of superior chariots in one round of impact.
In a similar scenario I beat the Five 

[marshalney2000]

In my first game I also flanked and destroyed several elephant units with a flank attack while they were pinned with my foot frontally.

[mad lemmey]

The easy answer might be downgrade the masses of cavalry to tribal instead of formed. 😋
Then you can have more units! 🤣🤣🤣

[nikgaukroger]

As one of those who beat, Will with a thirteen TUG army (Feudal German) I must admit to having a certain sympathy with his concerns.

I must admit to having little sympathy to be honest.

My army choices seem to leave me regularly on the smaller army (in TUGs) than my opponent end of the deal and I think I win more of those than I lose (although I'd not claim any Alasdair-like win ratio  ). You go into the game knowing (or having some idea of the possibility) that you'll be out-TUGed and have to work within that constraint. Thinking about it before a comp is no bad thing as well (obviously).

Average mounted long spear must be one of the most cost effective troops available - need to look at?

IMO after the points upping at the start of this year they're about right now.

[marshalney2000]

Well if you look at long spear cavalry they:
Negate Mounted melee expert if in two ranks
Count their factor in melee even against pike and foot long spear
Count their factor in rough terrain.
Need only one rank to claim a plus factor which they get against everything in melee.
Seems a pretty nice package for me in comparison with other mounted. Not many troops get all of these at a reasonable cost.
Hunter has eight units each of six bases and as Will points out they are pretty damn mobile.